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Michele Bachmann: Gay Marriage Is Merely A “Sex Practice”

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Michele Bachmann told supporters at a local Waverly, Iowa pizzeria that same-sex marriage equality is a special right, that all Americans already have the right to marriage — as defined by law, and strongly suggested that same-sex marriage is nothing more than a “sex practice.” Bachmann was challenged by two high school students who asked her several questions about LGBT rights and gay marriage.

Bachmann’s conservative tunnel vision led to her — frustratedly — state, “there are no special rights for people based upon your sex practices. There’s no special rights based upon what you do in your sex life. You’re an American citizen first and foremost and that’s it.”

WATCH: Bachmann To America’s Youth: We Serve God, Give Your Life Over To Jesus

Jason Noble, covering Michele Bachmann for the Des Moines Register, posted this transcript of the “debate” between Bachmann and Jane Schmidt, a Waverly High School student and president of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance. Noble notes there were about 65 people in the crown, and they were “mostly middle-aged and elderly,” which accounts for the applause.

After, you can watch the video of the exchange.

JANE SCHMIDT: One of my main concerns is government support for the LGBT community. So my question is what would you do to protect GSAs in high school and support the LGBT community.

BACHMANN: Well, No. 1, all of us as Americans have the same rights. The same civil rights. And so that’s really what government’s role is, to protect our civil rights. There shouldn’t be any special rights or special set of criteria based upon people’s preferences. We all have the same civil rights.

JANE SCHMIDT: Then, why can’t same-sex couples get married?

BACHMANN: They can get married, but they abide by the same law as everyone else. They can marry a man if they’re a woman. Or they can marry a woman if they’re a man.

JANE SCHMIDT: Why can’t a man marry a man?

BACHMANN: Because that’s not the law of the land.

JANE SCHMIDT: So heterosexual couples have a privilege.

BACHMANN: No, they have the same opportunity under the law. There is no right to same-sex marriage.

JANE SCHMIDT: So you won’t support the LGBT community?

BACHMANN: No, I said that there are no special rights for people based upon your sex practices. There’s no special rights based upon what you do in your sex life. You’re an American citizen first and foremost and that’s it.

ELLA NEWELL, a junior at Waverly High School: Wouldn’t heterosexual couples, if they were given a privilege then, that gay couples aren’t, like given that privilege to get married, but heterosexual couples are given a privilege to get married?

BACHMANN: Remember every American citizen has the right to avail themselves to marriage but they have to follow what the laws are. And the laws are you marry a person of the opposite sex.

Is it me or does it sound like Bachmann — who displays an offensive lack of understanding of same-sex relationships, which are no different from opposite-sex relationships — is advocating for gay men to mary straight women (0r, vice versa) then cheat?

Color us surprised that she even talked with the kids, as Bachmann has a strong habit of running away from students.

And, really, “sex practices”? Shame on her. I’d say that was one of the most-offensive things Bachmann has said about us, but, well, there’s this list that’s far worse.

 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=RenwNhL1Te0%3Fversion%3D3%26hl%3Den_US

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Trump Disavows Prediction Markets — His Family Has Financial Ties to Them: NYT

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President Donald Trump on Thursday told reporters that he was “never much in favor” of prediction markets. “I don’t like it conceptually. It is what it is. I’m not happy with any of that stuff.”

“Well, you know, the whole world unfortunately has become somewhat of a casino,” Trump, a former casino owner, told reporters. “And you look at what’s going on all over the world, in Europe and every place they’re doing these betting things.”

“I’m not happy with any of these sites,” Trump said. “They have predictive markets — it’s a crazy world, it’s a much different world than it was.”

And yet, Trump and some of his family members stand to benefit financially from those very markets, according to The New York Times.

“The president’s publicly traded media company unveiled its own prediction market product last year,” the Times reports. “And the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., has ties to two of the industry’s top firms, including Polymarket.”

READ MORE: ‘Now Do Hanging’ Republican Demands After DOJ Announces Firing Squads for Executions

Ethics experts the Times consulted say Trump’s public statements directly contradict his family’s financial interests in the industry.

Despite Trump’s admonition, new regulations are not expected. Last year, the Trump administration “backed away from enforcement efforts against Polymarket, and it is unclear whether regulators will adopt any new oversight measures.”

The Times reports that the White House “has warned staff not to wager on government decisions, but his family’s involvement with these firms undermines the president’s message.”

U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) who is sponsoring legislation to ban government officials from betting on prediction markets using classified information, has raised concerns about national security risks. Chances that the bill would pass through a GOP-majority Congress are uncertain.

“It’s too politically dicey,” she said. “There is not a single important issue of the day where I don’t feel the shadow of Trump and his sons.”

READ MORE: Trump Believes He’s a ‘Savior’ Sent by God and Will Never Cede Power: Stoddard

 

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‘Now Do Hanging’ Republican Demands After DOJ Announces Firing Squads for Executions

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A Republican member of Congress is calling for death row prisoners to be hanged after the U.S. Department of Justice announced it will move to expedite death row executions, including — for the first time in federal civilian history — by adding firing squads. The DOJ also said it will readopt lethal injections.

Declaring that it has a “solemn duty to seek, obtain, and implement lawful capital sentences,” the DOJ said in a statement that it will work to clear the way for the Department to “carry out executions once death-sentenced inmates have exhausted their appeals.”

The Department called the executions critical steps “to deterring the most barbaric crimes, delivering justice for victims, and providing long-overdue closure to surviving loved ones.”

The DOJ said it “has rescinded the Biden-Garland moratorium on federal executions and has authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants.”

Before leaving office, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates to life in prison.

READ MORE: Trump Believes He’s a ‘Savior’ Sent by God and Will Never Cede Power: Stoddard

“The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims.”

“Now do hanging,” demanded U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee.

Burchett last year suggested that House Republicans might offer convicted sex trafficker and Epstein partner Ghislaine Maxwell the possibility of a reduced sentence in exchange for her testimony.

In 2023, after the mass shooting deaths of three nine-year-olds and three adults at a Nashville Christian elementary school, Burchett told reporters nothing could be done.

“We’re not gonna fix it. Criminals are going to be criminals,” he told reporters.

READ MORE: Trump Found His New Favorite Reason to Void 2020

 

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Trump Believes He’s a ‘Savior’ Sent by God and Will Never Cede Power: Stoddard

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President Donald Trump has little intention of leaving the White House says veteran political analyst A.B. Stoddard, arguing that he believes he is a “savior” and will either try to find some way to run for another term, cancel the election, or do something else radical.

“I don’t think he has any intention of leaving,” Stoddard told columnist Bill Kristol.

She believes there are “two paths” for Trump.

“He does not want to fall apart in public,” Stoddard said, adding that he will be forced to “make a calculation at some point.”

Asking if Trump can “serve and walk across stages, make speeches, be as visible as he wants to be, which he really needs?” she noted that the president “needs to be on camera as many days a week as he can.”

“I think he will make the calculation that he cannot run again if he’s feeling that he’s aging too quickly” for another term, she said.

READ MORE: ‘What Evil Looks Like’: Columnist Says Trump Presides Over a ‘Circus of Death and Chaos’

“He has no intention, I believe, of having any kind of successor that’s not in his family. So he’s either going to find a way to try to run for [another] term, or cancel the election, or do something very radical,” which is “not beyond him,” she said.

Stoddard says she could see Trump trying to pass his presidency off to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, his son, Donald Trump Jr. or his daughter, Ivanka Trump — but not Eric Trump. And he’s not going to walk away from the money he is making now — the most he’s ever made in his life.

It’s “absolute lunacy” to think that he is going to walk away from “the two things that soothe his demons,” which are “adulation and money.”

“I genuinely believe, Bill, that he believes that he is some kind of, you know, savior,” Stoddard declared.

“I mean, it’s always about how he was brought here by God,” she continued. “I don’t know that he has [the] specifics down, but he certainly believes he is special, and he craves that, that central, you know, all the attention has to be on him.”

She also said that had Trump lost the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton and never been president, he would have “just sat on Fox three days a week, just bashing her.”

She concluded that she cannot see Trump just going off “like an old man into the sunset.”

READ MORE: Pope Leo: Church Should Focus More on Justice and Less on Same-Sex Blessings

 

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